Elon Musk says no to flying cars

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Future-tech/transportation titan Elon Musk crushes our childhood dreams of flying cars (though he is working on space colonies).

Business Insider transcribed Musk's comments about flying cars that he shared on Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk Radio podcast:

I'm debating, like, should there be flying cars or shouldn't there be flying cars? I'm of two minds on that.


If there are flying cars, then, well, obviously then you have added this additional dimension where a car could potentially fall on your head and would be susceptible to weather. And of course you will have to have a flying car that — where it will be like on autopilot, because otherwise forget it.


It's got to be autopilot, but even on autopilot, and even if you've got redundant motors and blades, you are still going from near zero chance of something falling on your head to something greater than that.


And there's also the noise challenge …

Something that I do think that would help a lot in cities is more tunnels, essentially with flying cars you are talking about going 3D. And there's a fundamental flaw with cities where you've got dense office buildings and apartment buildings and duplexes and they are operating on three dimensions then you go down to the street and suddenly it's two dimensional …


I think if you were to extrapolate that to cars and have more car tunnels, then you would alleviate the congestion completely … and you wouldn't need a flying car in that case, and it would always work, even if the weather is bad.


It would never ice up, and it would not fall on your head.

Here's the podcast: